Although it wasn’t considered a surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship provoked strong reactions from Florida lawmakers on Tuesday.
The president issued that executive order shortly after he was sworn into office for a second term last year. It said that babies born in the United States to parents who are in this country either illegally or temporarily are not automatically entitled to citizenship. That order never went into effect, however, as several federal judges across the country prohibited the administration from enforcing it in the face of legal challenges.
Speaking during a press conference in The Villages, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was “definitely disappointed” in the 6-3 ruling.
“That decision in birthright citizenship means, in effect, unless there’s an amendment to the federal Constitution, that you will have birthright citizenship for birth tourists and people coming to the country illegally indefinitely,” he said. “That’s a tough one. I don’t think that that’s the original understanding of it, but what I think it does is, like, you gotta make sure that people on visas can’t just come in and abuse it. You gotta make sure that the border remains secure. You gotta remain all these different things to really get a handle on it.”
Florida GOP U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, who hopes to succeed DeSantis in the governor’s mansion next year, called it a “terrible ruling from the Supreme Court.”
“President Trump is right — birthright citizenship has been abused beyond recognition,” Donalds said on X. “We must fight for an immigration system that puts the American people first, and promotes assimilation and security.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier had a stern response.
“No branch of government has done more damage to our country than the U.S. Supreme Court,” he wrote on his X account. “With this decision, the Court has, yet again, betrayed the Constitution and the American people.”
Florida U.S. Sen. Rick Scott said that now that the Supreme Court had made its decision, “Congress needs to respond.”
“We need to make sure illegal aliens don’t come into country and EXPLOIT our immigration system,” Scott wrote on X. “That means closing EVERY. SINGLE. LOOPHOLE.”
Scott went on to say that it was important for Congress to approve his SAFE KIDS Act, the “Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids in Domestic Surrogacy Act,” which has been described as Congress’s first legislative attempt to address international surrogacy.
Democrats celebrate the ruling
Florida Democrats hailed the ruling.
Orlando-area U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost said in a written statement that the high court had affirmed that if you are born in the United States, “you are a citizen of the United States.”
“Birthright citizenship has been settled law for more than 150 years,” he said. “It’s a guarantee rooted in equal protection, not politics. Attempts to narrow or erase that guarantee were never about constitutional principle, they were about deciding who belongs in America.”
Jacksonville-area state Rep. Angie Nixon, running in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, said the ruling affirmed that President Trump “is not a king and the Supreme Court and Congress should not treat him as such.”
“Birthright citizenship was settled more than 150 years ago with the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” she said. “The court was right to limit the president’s power in this regard. All of us should expect this administration to stop the targeted attacks on our neighbors and focus on the economy.”
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, competing against Nixon in the Democratic Senate primary, released a statement acknowledging how he and his family immigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union when he was three years old in search of freedom and new opportunities.
“For our nation’s entire history, immigrants have made invaluable contributions to the fabric of our country, building businesses, raising families, serving our country in uniform like my three brothers and myself, and contributing to the strength of our economy and our democracy.”
Longtime South Florida U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson called the ruling a victory for the Constitution and for families across the country.
“Every child born in the United States deserves the full rights and protections of citizenship, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. While today’s ruling is an important victory, we must remain vigilant in defending the Constitution and protecting immigrant families from continued attacks on their rights and their dignity.”
Transgender ban
Among the other decisions announced Tuesday by the Supreme Court was a 6-3 ruling upholding laws in Idaho and West Virginia barring transgender girls and women from playing on female school athletic teams. The court also ruled unanimously that barring transgender women and girls doesn’t violate the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
When asked about that ruling, DeSantis boasted that the Florida Legislature passed and he signed the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” during the 2021 legislative session, which barred transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports teams at public schools and universities.
“When we did it, we were attacked mercilessly for doing it, because we were cutting right against the ideology,” he said.
“But you know, I had these girls, they’re in high school and they’re running track, and they win a race, and then they go to the next round, and they have two boys with the other three girls. And they lose to the other two boys. And I’m just thinking to myself, ‘How is that something that we should be proud of? That’s fair? That’s just? That’s acceptable? To steal somebody else’s glory like that? And steal their hard work? I just thought that was disgraceful. So, we stood up and, when we did it, it was unpopular, certainly with media and with a lot of the activists, but it was absolutely the right thing to do.”
Equality Florida, the state’s leading LGBTQ+ activist group, said in a statement that it was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling.
“Transgender youth already face extraordinary levels of harassment, isolation and political attacks. Excluding them from activities with their peers only deepens that harm and makes it harder for young people to feel safe, supported, and connected.
“These cases are part of a broader national effort to push transgender people out of public life and turn their identities into political battlegrounds. The consequences reach far beyond transgender students, fueling harassment, profiling, and invasive questioning of girls who do not fit narrow expectations of how they are expected to look or act.”
–Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
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